stii.za.net » Blogging

On Rails for a bit - http://stii.co.za

Jan 07

Its a new year. As with every new year in the past, it is good and refreshing to start it with something refreshing. So I got myself a little dedicated server and rolled a cool Ruby on Rails setup on there all in the name of “research”. I’ve set it up to run a Typo blog (which is the preferred blogging platform for me at the moment), running behind Apache 2 and a sweet little Mongrel cluster. Nifty!

I know that some people have warned against running “scattered” blogs, but it is kind of the only option when wanting to experiment with different platforms and languages. So why not. Maybe there could possibly be a use for not rolling everything into one single blog.

So for the next couple of months (hopefully), I will be blogging with a multiple personality. I’ll give some views later on over there on how I find Typo. It would be pretty hard beating Wordpress…

So, please, visit me every once in a while over here: http://stii.co.za

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Filed in: Blogging, Ruby (on Rails) by: Stii

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The De Lille thing and OpenID providers

May 30

I’ve been under a rock the past 3 to 4 weeks. Only 2 nights ago, Justin told me what the whole whoohaa is about.

Today I read this article by My Broadband (found through Afrigator ) and I was wondering (since I know sweet blow-all about legal issues - Paul, help please!).

What got me thinking was this:

“When Internet users subscribe to services that allow them to operate their own blogs or take part in anonymous discussion forums or chat rooms,they first have to register with the blog or chat room operator.

These registrations require the submission of the user’s true identity and contact details. Although the user may provide fraudulent details, his or her email address is generally authenticated by sending the username and password necessary to activate the blog or discussion forum to the email address provided.

The true identities of these users are generally governed by the operator’s terms and conditions, which prevent the operator from disclosing it unless authorised thereto by due legal process.”

But what about services using OpenID? Where all you store is the user’s OpenID and nothing else. So if you do get hammerred to reveal the user’s “true identity” all you can do is pass the buck to the OpenID provider, is that correct? I feel sorry for the oke being defamed, since he’ll go on a wild goose chase of note here! (Okay, this is not yet an issue since not many services
has adopted the use of OpenID, so its not really all that relevant… YET.)

As Vincent said:

“It is easy to track you, there is a permanent record of what you said
that you might not have any control over anymore because you were
showing your muscle on someone else’s blog and its simply in bad taste.”

Caught you will get caught, so watch you tongue…

technorati tags:openid, patriciadelille

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Filed in: Blogging, Semantic Web by: Stii

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AMA plugin update

May 17

First of all, thanks to all you guys for all the help making this plugin better! A couple of bugs was reported and I’ve sorted it out.

The bugs I’ve sorted out is:

The plugin displayed on every page, even in the feeds. It will now display ONLY on the front page and in a post page.
It had some problems handling tags with spaces in them. It will now get them and strip the spaces out to make the tags a little more AMA friendly.

To upgrade all you need to do is to download the new afrigatorv1.2.zip and extract it. Then simply FTP it up and overwrite the existing files.

Download it here.

To install it, please see this post.

technorati tags:amaplugin, wordpress, plugin

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The AMA Wordpress plugin released

May 16

With Tyler’s permission, you can now download the latest in the Afrigator, Muti and Amatomu plugin.

The plugin will parse your post and collect all rel-tag links and display a collection of links that when clicked will take you to the respective site and show you all posts tagged with the same tag.

Here is some changes made to the original version:

Made the installation of the plugin simpler. You do not have to edit some of your template files in order to use the plugin. (instructions below)
It hides the tags. You need to click the icon/link in order to see the tags and use them.
It shows tag links to all 3 sites. We’ll rework the plugin at a later stage so you can select which sites you want to display.
It will include tags to Technorati in your post as links to the three sites. Technorati tags are in the rel-tag microformat, so we are able to parse for them!

Installation instructions:

Download the plugin here.
Extract the afritags.zip file to your disk.
Upload the afritags directory to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory on your web server where your blog is using FTP.
Go to your blog’s admin section.
Click on Plugins.
Find the Afrigator Tags plugin in the list.
Click the Activate link to the left of this line.

You are now all good and ready to go!

Please let me know if you experience any problems with it or if there is any enhancements you would like to see in the plugin! Enjoy!

technorati tags:afrigator, muti, amatomu, wordpress, plug in

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Turn up the Amps!

Mar 15

The dangerous duo is at it again… Get the new episode of Amplitude fresh off the shelve hot from the oven. An interesting chat with Eric Edelstein! And talking about the email SPAM thing, we all received the one from Mr Ramon Thomas. Stefano certainly give him a good indication of what he thinks…

technorati tags:podcast, amplitude

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Filed in: Blogging, Business, Marketing by: Stii

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Why Stormhoek slipped

Mar 09

Stormhoek and Mike asked the question “Why are Stormhoek not in the SA Blog Awards?”. At first, I felt very much ashamed of myself. How the hell could we forget the hand that pours the wine at our very much liked geeky gettogethers?! Shame on the SA blog community. Shame on me.

I do not want this to sound like an excuse. “Mia Culpa”. But…

Mike must be very serious about JOINING THE FRIGGIN’ CONVERSATION! since he always writes it in capital letters. And this is why Stormhoek slipped up. Do they ever read our blogs? Sure, I can understand that my blog might not be all that interesting to guys like them. Thing is I often read other blogs and comments on them, yet I NEVER see Graham nor Hugh commenting on ANY of my feeded blogs. Almost everyone on the blog awards has commented on my blog. If they have not commented, then they are a part of the MyBlogLog community and I saw their pretty little faces in my sidebar widget and went out of interest to see who they are and what they blog about! I’ve never seen Hugh nor Graham’s face on my widget.
At the 27dinner Graham gave a FANTASTIC speech. Why did he not join everybody that was there in the convo that was happening? Why did he not give his take on the event or commented and ~~joined the conversation~~ JOINED THE CONVERSATION?

That given, Chris is a member of MyBlogLog and frequents my bloggy fairly regularly. But that is still not the Stormhoek blog. That is Chris’s blog.

hat, my Stormhoek friends is why you missed out. That is why it is so damn important to JOIN THE CONVERSATIONS! When nominations time comes, you remember the guys you awed or fought with. The guys who you had convos in the blogosphere with.

Same goes for Vincent Maher. Almost EVERYONE reads his words of wisdom. He runs a great blog. The guy is a damn legend! Yet, he is not on there… Why?! Same reason I suppose. In all fairness, Vincent has read and commented on my blog a while ago. Unfortunately, one blog isn’t going to cut it. You need to be involved in the community.

Not so easy now is it? Time constraints. Deadlines. It is hard work to run a prominent blog. Posting great and interesting posts alone does not make for a successfull or popular blog. Its how active and involved you are within your community.

I might be wrong. Maybe you Stormhoek guys are active on other blogs. Just not the blogs that mattered when it came to the SA Blog Awards.

If there is any other reasons why you think they slipped, let me know (apart from the “We f@cked up” stuff… We know that already.) AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION!

technorati tags:stormhoek, 27dinner, geekdinner, blogging, sablogawards

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Filed in: Blogging, GeekDinner!, Social Web, South Africa by: Stii

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The real effects of a Geek Dinner

Feb 14

I just received this email from Imel that attended the Garden Route Geek Dinner:

Guys, thanks to your inspiration (and reading your valued
contributions to cyberspace) I have taken the plunge and started a blog.

Check it out here: http://www.imel.co.za,
comments & suggestions welcome.

Regards

Imel

It is good to know how meetings like this can influence for the good! Word up, Imel! Welcome and thank you for joining the conversation!

technorati tags:geekdinner, 27dinner, blogging

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Blog off would have been better off…

Feb 14

…if they installed something like Wordpress MU (Multi User). I mean look at it! They have developed their own system which is not all bad, but some of the basic functions lack which would have been there if they rolled with an open source system like WPMU or b2evolution.

I’m SURE they’ve got the resources to manage a setup like that. What is more, a big corporation like 24.com could be a useful contributor towards an open source project like WPMU! Whats up with THAT?! Why try and re-invent the wheel?! They could still brand their service. They could still make a somewhat closed community with WPMU. I simply don’t get why they spent resources writing their own system halfway.
I guess what Uno says makes sense. (In the comments section)

CEO: “Come on techie! Give us a Web2.0 site.” Inhouse dev: “Uhh, OK Boss.”

CEO doesn’t understand what he is asking for, Dev doesn’t know what
is being asked of him. And at the end of they it doesn’t tie in with
the larger, archaic structures of their site.

technorati tags:blogging, blogs, web2.0, wordpressmu, b2evolution

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Blog off debacle

Feb 05

24.com is having a competition to get non-technical people blogging. Not without some controversy I must add.
I often rant about the state of the South African internet community. We need to educate and get the non-technical web users involved in the conversations.
Mike Stopforth made the following statement:

“They are very tight communities, very seldom venturing out in to the
Web and in turn the ‘non-multi-user’ blogosphere rarely refers back to
them. It’s sad that some of these really talented writer don’t get
sufficient credit from the more tech-orientated ‘external’ or
‘independent’ blogosphere.”

Bryan said :

“An incredibly small number of South Africans even *know* what a blog
is. 24.com’s Blog Off will encourage a wider part of our audience to
start blogging, and interacting with our content and services in new
and exciting ways.”

The thing is, although Bryan and his team’s motives are honorable, it could be a lot better! Quite frankly, I don’t care WHY 24.com is doing it. Whether it be for
increased Adsense revenue, branding or simply to get a bigger reader
base is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that they are in a closed
community not interacting with other, independant blogs. I understand the fact that most people blogging on 24.com are not blog-literate. There is, however, a ton of things that can be done to make them more literate.
The following can be done to improve the service and get them involved:

Friendly URL’s - currently they do have somewhat friendly URL’s (for example: http://blogs.24.com/cindy)
Post permalinks - Create human readably permalinks to reference outside the 24.com framework.
Pingbacks / trackbacks - So that we outside the community can join the conversations and vice versa.
Outside comments - So that we can comment and reference our own blogs instead of first creating an 24.com account to join in on the conversations.
Reverse the order of comments - You have the first comment at the bottom and the latest comment at the top. Makes it difficult to follow the conversation if you have to read it bottom up!

I think if you can do this, you will have a LOT more followers. I would definitely take part in voting for popular blogs, no problem. I would not like to have to join the community just to take part. I already have a community through my own blog and would not like to manage a second community. I would love to grow my community by getting yours to read my blog! So if you would like Angus to eat some crow, I suggest you look into these points!

Angus said:

“This is the Naspers way Mike. Build something (thats good but not
necessarily great) and then spend a lot of money
securing/attracting/developing audience - hoping that the returns come
later (remembering that R24k or so a month is not a lot of money for
them, it is substantial in the blogging world).”

You do have the financial backing to change the online world in South Africa. Now do it!

Note to Bryan:
If you do decide to implement the above, I promise you that I’ll thow my weight behind your blog off project. As soon as a new feature is implemented, I’ll announce it. We can work together to get this going great for everybody.